The Longest Journey Walkthrough

Welcome to my Longest Journey walk-through. (-: If you're new to my series of low-spoiler computer game walkthroughs, the idea is to point players
towards things they might not have thought of in each game rather than giving away puzzle solutions or offering step-by-step instructions. There's not much
point to playing an adventure game if you know all the puzzle solutions in advance, and there's no point at all in investigating a
mysterious plotline if you've already had the plot spoiled.

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So these pages are as close to spoiler-free as possible. If you are looking for the
solution to a particular puzzle, I recommend the excellent UHS site--you can
only see one hint at a time there, so you can get the answer to one puzzle without ruining all the others for yourself. My website here focuses on exactly the
things UHS and traditional walkthroughs don't: the non-critical parts of the game, little detours you can take, extra details you might miss if you only
did what was strictly necessary to win the game. If you want even fewer spoilers--you're considering whether or not to buy the game, for example, and just want
to know whether there's anything you're going to hate in it--please try my
Longest Journey Review page to find all the pertinent information in one
convenient spoiler-free package.

Adventure games in general tend to be more linear than CRPG's, and The Longest Journey is no exception. It's impossible to miss the vast majority of this game--
if you don't talk to everyone present, finish a quest, or notice a meaningful detail, you generally won't be able to leave the area until you rectify this.
Still, there are a few game elements that it's possible to skip accidentally. I'll list those for you here:

Throughout the game

It's possible to miss snippets of information in most conversations, because A) you may not be able to return to a topic you didn't ask about yet once you've moved
on, and B) sometimes different pieces of information will be revealed based on different conversational choices April makes. I haven't detailed all of these cases, because
it would take forever and if you're the kind of person who would use it, you'll also be the kind of person who would prefer to save the game before each conversation and
follow the dialogue tree to completion yourself. Two things it may help you to know in advance are that conversational choices in one dialogue will never influence
future conversations and events, nor will they ever prevent you from progressing in the game. So you're perfectly safe either role-playing The Longest Journey through
(picking whichever response you think April ought to give at any given moment), or reloading repeatedly until you've seen all possible conversations. Whichever
suits your playing style better.

Prologue

*Nothing much here in the way of options, this is a chance for you to get used to the interface more than anything else.

Chapter 1

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*Though April implies she can operate the FACT terminal manually, in fact she can't. Amusing to see her try, though.
*Examining Zack and Charlie's doors reveals some of April's feelings about them.
*You can open your window and look out. Fooling around with the clothesline, chain, and rubber ducky outside the window is something you can do now or in
chapter 2; doesn't matter which. You do need an additional inventory object to make anything happen here.
*fooling around with the machine near the apartment building is also something you can do now or in
chapter 2; doesn't matter which. You need to have an additional inventory object, figure out a nifty little mechanical puzzle, and do an annoying
pixel-hunt. Once the light turns on, don't give up until you've found one more tiny little knob to diddle.
*fooling around with the key in the subway station is also something you can do now or in
chapter 2; doesn't matter which. You will need a number of additional inventory objects to safely nab the key.
*You have a choice when April talks to her boss: she can agree to work tonight, or decide to go home. She'll get a different ending to the chapter based on her
decision. The difference is minor--in one she gets a vision at home in her apartment, and in the other she gets a different vision at the bar. If you're playing the
game for a second time, then definitely choose the vision you haven't seen yet, as they're both interesting. If you're the indecisive sort, I recommend going home,
since you then get to meet Mickie the building super, something you otherwise don't; there's nothing to do at the bar except watch the cutscene
(there are no new conversational options with Charlie or Emma).
*If you go home for the evening, be sure to talk to Mickie fully before calling it a night; you won't get another chance to ask her about her nightmares.

Chapter 2

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*Be sure to stop by the cafe to talk to Charlie. He doesn't have any information useful to the plot, but he does have
some new conversational options (depending on the activity you chose the night before), and he's always fun to talk to. (-:
*Fooling around with the clothesline, chain, and rubber ducky outside April's window is something you can do now or in
chapter 1; doesn't matter which. You do need an additional inventory object to make anything happen here.
*Fooling around with the machine near the apartment building is also something you can do now or in
chapter 1; doesn't matter which. You need to have an additional inventory object, figure out a nifty little mechanical puzzle, and do an annoying
pixel-hunt. Once the light turns on, don't give up until you've found one more tiny little knob to diddle.
*Fooling around with the key in the subway station is also something you can do now or in
chapter 1; doesn't matter which. You will need a number of additional inventory objects to safely nab the key.
*When you go to Metro Circle, you can visit the elevator tubes and chat with the policeman, but you won't be able to do anything there yet.
*One of the posters at the Mercury Theater advertises a movie called "A Welsh Ghost Story" by Ragnar Tornquist (the game author). Cute. (-: I don't
get the joke about the movie called "Women in Dire Need of Medical Attention" though.
*You can offer the cups merchant your ring for an interesting extra interaction.
*Examine the old fisherman a few times; his reactions are amusing (there are three different ones, randomly selected).
*You can't give the map guy his list back in this chapter (you'll meet him again later). It's not actually necessary to give Westhouse his map or get him to sign for
it in this chapter; if you don't, you'll be able to go back to him to get it done later.
*When you get back to Venice, go talk to Charlie again; he has some new interactions for you. (If you're enamored of him, be sure to tell him "I'm just tired"
when he asks what's wrong; he and April will flirt a little on that conversational track. (-: )
*At the end of the chapter, you can choose to go on the date you promised Zack or stand him up. Your decision won't affect anything but the first part of your
conversation the next morning (the date will have gone predictably badly, so he'll be equally pissed off either way), but it does change the characterization of
April and Zack pretty significantly in my opinion, so I'm glad the designer gave us this choice.

Chapter 3

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*There is an important timing issue in this chapter. When you first arrive in West Metro Circle (Cop Street), it is possible to solve the puzzle with the
roadblock in the very first location--long before you have learned what you need to solve it for. It's much better if you go down the street to the police
station FIRST. For one thing, the story makes more sense this way; for another, there's a side character you will otherwise never get to talk to
(the actor pacing around outside the police station).
*There's no way to make Zack less angry at April; it's part of the plot.
*You can go back to previous locations on the subway now, though there's nothing new in any of them yet.
*Cute note: examine the fresco on the cathedral wall to hear a cute bit about the "sequel" to the Bible.
*Oddly enough, it's possible for April to call her mom from the vidphone at the police station. You get a little more backstory on the fight between April and
her father if you do.
*If you ask the desk sergeant for the work order form *before* looking at the old form to find the number, she'll have an amusing art-student argument with April.
*When George is working on the door, you can chat him up for six or seven different silly non sequiturs. He says them all in order, not randomly, so you can stop
once he starts repeating himself; he'll never say anything new.
*You can either edit Warren's record as requested, or delete it. He has an amusing reaction if you do the latter, but they work equally well. (-:
*There's no way to go put the hapless cop's eye back in its receptacle in his locker, unfortunately. It just disappears from your inventory.
*You get to decide for yourself whether April is a virgin or not when she talks to Burns Flipper; but if she says she isn't, you'll get to hear Burns' real
backstory (which probably explains the apparent brain trauma that makes him jerk his head around wildly and say "fuck" every third word.) He doesn't
believe her if she says she's a virgin, jaded soul that he is.
*At the end of the chapter, you can choose whether or not to tell Charlie and Emma what's going on. Unfortunately this choice does not affect the future of the game.

Chapter 4

The game gets extremely linear right about now, which is strange, because you'd think the journey across the mystical Arcadian wilderness would be the ideal place for
exploration, side quests, and different courses of action. Not so: there are no substantial choices to be made again till Chapter 9. A few minor things you can
do that may be optional:

*You can choose to skip out on the innkeeper rather than washing the dishes for her, but you will need to go back and do the work in order to get some
coins you need later anyway.
*As far as I know it is impossible to be killed by the witch; she will back April into a corner, but never actually catch her.
*At the Bandu party, it's possible to talk to Crow for some additional cutesy dialogue about fleas and female birds.

Chapter 5

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*The choices you can make in conversation with the batty old alchemist are very entertaining. Don't miss challenging him to hopscotch. ;-)
*It doesn't matter in which order you complete the tasks (depetrify the statues and free the wind); the animations are the same.
*The delivery list has disappeared in the swamp, so as far as I know it's impossible to give it to the mapmaker as he requests... but you can still visit
him for an amusing chat about it. (-:

Chapter 6

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*April's diary entry at the beginning of this chapter is hilarious. (-:
*In the very beginning of the chapter, go up to the bridge rather than down to the hold. You can get some interesting conversations with Nebevay and
Tun this way, which you'll never get if you go to the hold and trigger the storm first.
*April can talk to the apple barrel. It's rather amusing, if you get the joke. (-: (It's from Treasure Island.)

Chapter 7

There are no optional actions to be taken in this chapter at all, other than a couple of conversational choices talking to the Maerum queen.

Chapter 8

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*When you're talking to the young potter and the Alatien guard, you can choose some extra conversational options to set them up with each other, though you
won't get to see this to its conclusion no matter what you do, unfortunately enough.

Chapter 9

The game snaps back to urgency here. My heart was pounding like crazy when April got back to the Border House.

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*There are different choices you can make while talking to Halloway which actually make a key difference in April's character. However, none of these choices affects the
plot of the chapter at all--Halloway's actions will all still be the same.
*When talking to Halloway, ask him what he wants from you last; you won't get a chance to ask him about the other two topics once he tells you what he
wants, and you'll miss interesting information that way.
*You will not get to see any of your Stark friends again after this point no matter what you do. In fact, the game just sort of forgets about them after this.
If you want to know what happens to them and what they will have to say to April when she finally meets them again, you'll have to imagine it yourself.

Chapter 10

Things you can do that may be optional (besides conversations and examining clickable objects):

*April can visit Brian Westhouse one last time and talk to him about the coming invasion.
*You can wander around the rest of Marcuria, which has a creepy deserted feel to it, but there's no one left except Brian, Abnaxus, and Yerin.
*Don't neglect to talk fully to Minstrum Yerin; he has non-critical but affecting news.
*This is exceedingly minor, but if you try touching the water in the shallow pool beneath the library, you'll learn why April doesn't just use her water-breathing
abilities to go fetch the artifact. (I was wondering, anyway.)

Chapter 11

There's nothing truly optional in this chapter, but there are a heck of a lot of conversational options.

*You may want to replay the conversations with McAllen a few times to hear the different possibilities.
*When talking to Cortez, be sure to ask him how he was captured before asking him if he's told you everything; otherwise you will never get that option again, and
you will miss out on some critical information that makes the finale make much more sense.
*The conversation with Jerry the receptionist is also slightly different if you give him the appropriate object before talking to him first or not.

Chapter 12

There's nothing optional any longer; this is the endgame. Note, though, that you can be caught by guards in this section if you don't move around
carefully enough. If you are, you'll just be returned to the main waiting room and can try again.

Chapter 13

Nothing optional, this is the finale. Fulfill your destiny, wipe a little tear from your eye, and have a seat on my bench waiting for The Longest Journey 2 to come out. :-D